Planning is my gift and my curse.
I live in a constant state of planning, so much so that I often forget to stop and actually be.
To relax, I plan future holidays, craft projects or gardening experiments.
When I’m awake and anxious at 3am, I can’t turn it off. Planning my next day. My schedule. Round and round and round.
My planning brain is useful when it comes to writing books. The planning is my favourite part, coaxing vague ideas into actual story shapes, making links and threads and weaving it all together into something coherent.
I plan at the beginning of the process, but I don’t stop. The plan is always evolving as I go, as characters emerge and new ideas arrive. I’m updating the plan all the way to the very end.
In the past, I’ve used post-its, note cards and a whiteboard to do this planning work, but with this new project I’m trying Miro. Someone on Threads suggested I talk about it in this newsletter, so here I am.
This is the book I’m currently working on. It won’t be out until 2025, so I’m not going to tell you anything about it, except that I pitched it to my publisher it as “Dead Poets Society with demons”.
I used this template as a basis, and adapted it for my needs.
I like to plan for 20 chapters and around 80,000 words. I’m an underwriter, so it will inevitably end up being longer in the end. (A HUNGER OF THORNS is around 115k)
Let’s zoom in on Chapter One. We start with When and What:
If this book had a lot of different locations, I’d also include Where but it doesn't, so I didn’t bother. I write a very brief summary of what’s going to happen. Maybe later I’ll go in and list the individual scenes that appear in this chapter, but I haven’t done that yet.
Then we look at the Who of it all:
I probably won’t fill all these out for every character, but it’s a way of helping me make sure everyone has enough screen time, and that everyone has relationships with everyone else, and not just with the main character.
Then we have some plot stuff:
The exposition helps me keep track of what everyone (including the reader) knows. The twist/reveal helps me keep the pacing tight. Then there is where we are according to the Save the Cat beat sheet, which I find useful. And the romance beat, which is a slightly different beat sheet. (The n/a is because we haven’t met Page’s love interest yet.)
The final three cards are for vibes:
This book is a bit of a mashup - it’s dark academia/fantasy/horror. I really don’t want it to feel like it’s leaping awkwardly from one of those genres to the other, so I need to, as the young folk say, keep the vibes immaculate.
Some chapters have all the fields filled in very thoroughly, and others have the barest sketch. I try not to be too wedded to the plan, or worry to much about the bits where I have no idea what’s going to happen yet. The idea of first plan, then write, then edit doesn’t really work for me. I do it all in a never-ending jumble, and hopefully something decent emerges by the time I get to the end.
I’m currently deep in a writing phase, which is going fine.
(help)
Let me know if you have any questions!
Read
I’ve been revisiting some childhood favourites lately. Susan Cooper’s Greenwitch, and a handful of Diana Wynne Jones, who I want to be when I grow up.
Watch
Speaking of immaculate vibes, the third season of The Great is by far my favourite. We also as a family enjoyed Muppets Mayhem, which I think is the best Muppet TV show since the OG one in the 1980s. The decision not to include any of the core Muppets (Kermit, Piggy, Fozzie and Gonzo) is a smart one, in my opinion.
Play
A Playstation VR2 has made its way into our house, and I’m obsessed with Beat Saber. I feel like a graceful, balletic Jedi, sweeping my glowing blade through all those boxes in time to the music. I suspect I look more like a drunk, flailing octopus, but who cares?
Lili Wilkinson is the award-winning author of eighteen books for young people, including The Erasure Initiative and After the Lights Go Out. Lili has a PhD from the University of Melbourne, and is a passionate advocate for YA and the young people who read it, establishing the Inky Awards at the Centre for Youth Literature, State Library of Victoria. Her latest book is A Hunger of Thorns.
I absolutely love it when writers share the nitty gritty details of how they write so this was such a joy to read! I’ll have to give Miro a go.
I'm behind- loved reading this and seeing your process. Do you ever use Scrivener? It can do a lot of planning like how you have it.
I need to practice planning! I've tended to be a seat of your pants writer, but I'd like to embrace a method like yours for my current project. :) Thanks for sharing!